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5 Great Invitation Sites For Your Next Fundraiser

When asked “What’s the greatest challenge nonprofit organizations face?”, a GuideStar survey revealed that 46% of readers identified fundraising as their top challenge. Most people don’t like talking about money, but fundraising doesn’t have to be a drag. Successful fundraising is all about demonstrating a meaningful connection to your organization’s work for donors; show them why they matter and how they can make a difference.

Check out the hottest fundraising trends and these foolproof tactics for inspiration. And if you’ve been tasked with creating invitations for an annual campaign, below are five of the best online invitations sites to help you fill the seats at your upcoming gala, collect donations online, and catch the attention of likely donors.

Tools

Paperless Post is the Queen of design when it comes to invitations. They boast thousands of customizable templates from top designers including Vera Wang and Kate Spade, and have 98 templates specifically designed for fundraising (Check them out here). Some templates are free, and sending campaigns with premium options and RSVP tracking comes at an affordable rate via their Coin system. They also offer paper invitations for a couple of dollars per print!

Eventbrite, used for event management and tracking, has a great option for nonprofit fundraising … it’s like having extra volunteers. You can set up your custom page to sell tickets, collect donations, send custom email invitations to your guest list, and design a seated floor plan. Easily manage everything on the go right from Eventbrite’s mobile app. They do give 501c3 organizations a discount, but still take 2% of funds raised.

Pingg is like Paperless Post + Eventbrite in one! They offer a large curation of independent designer templates, and each event gets its own webpage with the ability to sell tickets. If you’re cool with ads on your invites you can access all Pingg’s free tools. Alternatively, you can pay a nominal $70 fee for a pro annual membership, allowing you to customize everything with your branding and invite up to 2,500 guests per event. Oh, and they offer printed invitations for about $3 a pop.

Punchbowl & Evite are two additional options for sending and managing online event invitations. Many of the templates are free and user-intuitive. Both sites offer paid membership tiers for premium templates and additional features. While punchbowl is theme-specific and offers various options for managing your guest list, it does not have themed options for fundraising. Evite has essentially the same functionality and does include themed templates specific to charitable fundraising (Check them out here).

How to pick a tool

Before you decide which service is right for you, answer these five additional questions:

What features are most important to reach your fundraising goals?

Does the ticketing or registration form need to match your website?

Do you need to download attendee information after the event?

Would it be more advantageous to send a digital and printed version of the invitation?

Do you have enough budget for more advanced features, and will they increase your fundraising capabilities?